Love Need Not Be Explicit
by SGL
Summary: Fifty sentences on the relationship between Kyouraku Shunsui and Ise Nanao. For the LJ community 1sentence.


**Fandom: **BLEACH  
**Pairing: **Kyouraku Shunsui x Ise Nanao  
**Theme set: **Delta  
**Rating: **G to PG

**By:** SGL/indienot

**Notes:** These don't come in any plot order. Oh, and some references may not make sense if you're not up to speed in the manga. This was the first time I've written something like this and it was a lot a fun, but some parts feel awkward. Be gentle?

Love Need Not Be Explicit 

**01. Air**

Nanao's suffocation under Yama-jii's spiritual pressure worried Shunsui more than she would ever realize.

**02. Apples**

Nanao set the basket of fruits and vegetables on the desk, pushed up her glasses and informed her reclining captain, "Sake is not a food group, sir."

**03. Beginning**

Ise Nanao's first impression of Kyouraku Shunsui was that he was an irresponsible drunk – and as it turned out, some things did never change.

**04. Bugs**

Shunsui blinked when Nanao climbed calmly onto his desk, muttered something about a 'massive centipede' in the corner, and demanded he kill it.

**05. Coffee**

Neither of them drank coffee; Nanao preferred tea and Shunsui never wanted to risk sobering up.

**06. Dark**

Shunsui wore a priceless Kyouraku family heirloom to hold back his black hair, though Nanao thought he had gotten the flowery clip from the same cheap vendor that sold him the pink haori.

**07. Despair**

Any shred of sanity she had perceived in her captain had evaporated the moment Nanao walked in on her captain weeping over the mysterious vanishing of his secret sake stash.

**08. Doors**

Shunsui felt his luckiest whenever Nanao left her sliding bedroom door slightly ajar when she went to sleep; he wanted to be able to watch over her at her most vulnerable.

**09. Drink**

Ise Nanao would not admit to anything outside of a professional attachment to Kyouraku Shunsui; so she did not quite know what to call the emotional squeeze in her chest whenever her captain wandered off with his well-endowed drinking partner, Matsumoto.

**10. Duty**

Nanao had put the word 'Duty' in icing on her Valentine's Day gift chocolate to Shunsui in an attempt to discourage what he inevitably ended up doing – hugging the life out of her in ecstasy despite being beaten repeatedly in the face by her heaviest tome.

**11. Earth**

Nanao had discovered a rose, freshly plucked from the garden, on her pillow early in the morning on her birthday and could not ignore the dirt wedged under her captain's fingernails as he waved a sleepy 'Good morning, Nanao-chan' to her later at breakfast with Ukitake and his 3rd seat officers.

**12. End**

Both Shunsui and Nanao knew there was no such thing as forever – not even in Soul Society – but they did not dwell on the eventual separation that all soul mates would have to experience.

**13. Fall**

"Captain, you should stop taking naps in the square; the rookies need to rake the leaves and they keep thinking they've discovered a dead body."

**14. Fire**

Shunsui blew out the candle that was burning light over Nanao's sleeping figure and the surrounding piles of forms, and pulled her small frame toward his chest.

**15. Flexible**

Despite of the stiff glares and long lectures she usually gave him for 'shirking his professional duties,' Nanao was actually quite lax about the rules and allowed Shunsui to get away with almost anything.

**16. Flying**

What Shunsui would later describe as 'flying courageously from Soukoukyu Hill in an effective attempt to distract Yama-jii from the recapture of the innocent Kuchiki Rukia from the ryoka Kurosaki Ichigo,' Nanao would call 'jumping off a cliff."

**17. Food**

Her captain was actually a very good cook once he actually got up and around to doing it, though Nanao never seemed to notice that she was the only one who he'd ever cooked for.

**18. Foot**

Why were _his_ dirty socks left on _her_ desk _again_?

**19. Grave**

The only other person Shunsui had ever brought to visit the graves of his parents was Nanao, and she was not in deep enough denial to ignore what that meant.

**20. Green**

The first thing Shunsui ever bought for Nanao was a cup of green tea at the bar because she had refused to drink sake with him.

**21. Head**

Her frontal lobe absolutely throbbed at the idea of running through yet another stack of the captain's overdue forms, but Nanao stubbornly stuck to it; if she couldn't finish the work, Lord Yamamoto would assign Shunsui to _another_ ludicrously dangerous mission as punishment.

**22. Hollow**

The Hollow bite wound from the Kyoto mission left Nanao in a cast for a few days, during which time she took _full_ advantage of Shunsui's willingness to do whatever the hell she wanted him to.

**23. Honor**

When an awkward and drunk Nanao threw herself into Shunsui's lap one night, he put her to bed, as a gentleman should, unwilling to even steal a kiss.

**24. Hope**

As she lay in the grass, still gasping for air after Lord Yamamoto's appearance, Nanao desperately willed Shunsui's safety.

**25. Light**

Shunsui had always admired the way Nanao's dainty, feminine hands could glow with deadly kidou, and yet, whenever she had to use them on the battlefield, he felt almost as though he'd failed her somehow.

**26. Lost**

Zaraki Kenpachi blew past, trying to get to the captain's meeting with little Yachiru on his shoulder directing him down the wrong street; and Nanao felt a rush of relief in that, at least, Shunsui knew how to get places on his own.

**27. Metal**

There were moments Shunsui thought that even the cool steel of his curved shikai blades might not have been enough to stand up to Nanao, pissed off, with a heavy book.

**28. New**

When Nanao had first been appointed to the Vice Captain position, Shunsui's straw hat had been tatty and dirty; that is, until it was replaced the next day by a new one that had been left mysteriously on his desk overnight.

**29. Old**

Age was not usually a factor in Soul Society, but Shunsui could not be afraid he was just too old for his lovely, (relatively) young Nanao-chan.

**30. Peace**

Though Kyouraku Shunsui was one of the most experienced in combat in the Gotei 13, Nanao observed that he always tried to find a way to avoid violence – whether for the sake of peace or for the sake of not having to get up.

**31. Poison**

Though the rumors tended to exaggerate the details, the 8th division vice captain could not honestly say she had never drugged her captain before.

**32. Pretty**

Shunsui hoped that if he told Nanao how beautiful she was at least two or three times a day, she'd start believing it.

**33. Rain**

Though Shunsui enjoyed lying alone on the roof with cold sake on sunlit day, he liked it better when he could stand with Nanao on the porch on a rainy day when the world was quiet and clean – just the way his Nanao-chan liked it.

**34. Regret**

Whenever he woke up to find out that his poor Nanao-chan had slaved through the night to finish _his_ work, Shunsui almost wished she had never become his vice captain – she deserved someone more responsible, someone who could take care of her better.

**35. Roses**

It was because of the large, wall-punching ryoka that Nanao was finally able to realize why shredding the petals off of roses had been part of her job description for years.

**36. Secret**

Matsumoto chuckled, "You want to know what your captain says about you when you're not around…sorry, that's a secret, Nanao!"

**37. Snakes**

Nanao had once told Shunsui she didn't like snakes; Shunsui suggested she stay away from Captain Ichimaru.

**38. Snow**

To kill the anxiety and boredom of the wait for their captains' return from the battlefield, Yachiru had convinced Nanao make a lumpy Shunsui-shaped snow-shinigami (complete with straw hat and sake bottle) next to a surprisingly well-rendered Zaraki snowman; though when they returned from a snack break to make more, they discovered a Yachiru-shaped snowball had been perched on snow-Zaraki's shoulder and a Nanao-snow-shinigami now stood loyally next to the Shunsui one (whose sake bottle had disappeared).

**39. Solid**

"No, you cannot _drink_ for dinner, Captain."

**40. Spring**

Nanao watched, amused, as Shunsui, in his pink haori, disappeared behind a wall of sakura petals falling from the tree.

**41. Stable**

It was during her first week of vice captaincy and after watching her hung-over captain totter to the ground for the third time, Nanao realized why Shunsui spent so much time on lying down.

**42. Strange**

That's strange, Shunsui thought, why is my favorite brush hidden away in Nanao-chan's desk drawer... along with every love note I have ever written for her?

**43. Summer**

"Well, if Nanao-chan hates the summer heat, then so do I," Shunsui proceeded to sit pouting and whining in the cool dark of his office for the most of the afternoon, until Nanao finally relented and agreed to go on a picnic dinner with him (_after_ she hurled the paperweight at his head, of course).

**44. Taboo**

Any comment made by any man on Ise Nanao's physical appearance that was anything but positive and chaste would meet a different side of Kyouraku Shunsui.

**45. Ugly**

Nanao knew she wasn't ugly, but she knew she wasn't as attractive as Shunsui insisted either – not with the voluptuous and confident Matsumoto or the sweet and friendly Hinamori or the quietly beautiful Nemu around – but how others perceived her physical appearance was not actually of great importance to Nanao, of course.

**46. War**

Disguised by all the goofing off and the flirting and the _paperwork_, people tended to forget, even with the impending war against Aizen, that Kyouraku was a Captain and Ise was his Lieutenant – that they were capable and that they would soon be leading their own troops to war.

**47. Water**

Once a night, Nanao slipped into the baths and Shunsui slunk behind her, exercising his reiastu-concealing ability, not to peep (okay, maybe a little) but to catch a glimpse of her hair down.

**48. Welcome**

Nanao wasn't sure Shunsui was even aware there was an annual orientation day for the new shinigami recruits to the 8th Division, though she figured it was probably for the best that he didn't show up and _influence_ them or anything.

**49. Winter**

Shunsui always felt there was something comforting about winter: about Hitsugaya going through entire days in a pleasant mood; about Matsumoto covering up her breasts so people could, for a moment, focus on her lovely _face_; and most of all, about Nanao-chan, pink cheeked, sipping hot tea on a bench surrounded by snow.

**50. Wood**

They each knew the sound of the other's footsteps on the floorboards, though never before the war against Aizen had either of them used this familiarity as the signal to cease their prayers for the other's safe return home.


End file.
